Saturday, September 02, 2006

Day 3: Tuesday, August 8 (London)

Up early and to the British Library where we saw original manuscripts by Lewis Carroll, Virginia Woolf, Tolstoy, Charlotte Bronte and Charles Dickens (plus many, many more). There were original editions of bibles (including the Gutenberg Bible) and of course, the Magna Carta. There were also the original scribblings of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, including the lyrics to 'A Hard Day's Night' on the back of a greeting card.

Next was the British Museum. It is quite possibly the greatest chronicle of civilization. All of civilization. You could spend a year in here and never quite see it all.

Egyptian tombs:Mummies and preserved bodies:

Ancient Greece:The Asian Empire:It was like the Louvre for history.

After the museum, we went back to the hotel to clean up and then headed off to high tea at Claridge's Hotel. It was pretty spectacular.

We started with champagne...And then moved on to turkey, ham, egg salad and salmon finger sandwiches....

Scones....Yummy desserts.....And of course, tea...With full bellies we wandered around Leicester Square, which was a hot-bed of activity. There was a premiere going on for the movie 'Lady in the Water', so while the crowds converged on whomever was arriving, we were able to check out the area in peace.

We walked a little further to Covent Garden (where we had been for dinner the night before) and checked out the market scene and Neal Street (a pedestrian only street lined with boutiques and flower stands).

The Royal Opera House was down this way as well and we tried to peek inside but there was a performance going on and the staff wouldn't let us.

We made our way down the heart of the theater district and into Soho, where we had tickets for that evening's performance of 'Fool for Love' at the Apollo Theater (and starring Juliette Lewis).

We were a little early so we grabbed a cocktail at the bar next door and then got to our seats in time for me to get yelled at by an usher for taking this picture of the empty stage.

We were pretty lukewarm about the actual performance, but the experience and the theater itself was worth the price of admission.

After the show we walked around Piccadilly Circus, admired the neon lights and enjoyed the glitz (oh, and rode in our one and only London taxi cab, which I forgot to take a picture of).

We grabbed a snack and a drink at the Texas Embassy, the former location of the actual embassy (when Texas was a country, of course) and found out just how much tex-mex in England could cost.